Insights into evolutionary interaction patterns of the 'Phosphorylation Activation Segment' in kinase

We are interested in studying the phosphorylation of the kinase activation loop, distinguishing the passage from the unphosphorylated to the phosphorylated form without allostery. We performed an interaction study to trace the change of interactions between the activation segment and the kinase catalytic core, before and after phosphorylation. Results show that the structural changes are mainly due to the attraction between the phosphate group and guanidine groups of the arginine side chains of RD-pocket, which are constituted mainly of guanidine groups of the catalytic loop, the β9, and the αC helix. This attraction causes propagation of structural variation of the activation segment, principally towards the N-terminal. The structural variations are not made on all the amino acids of the activation segment; they are conditioned by the existence of two beta sheets stabilizing the loop during phosphorylation. The first,β6-β9 sheet is usually present in most of the kinases; the second, β10-β11 is formed due to the interaction between the main chain amino acids of the activation loop and the αEF/αF loop.